Heathrow: Whose Priorities?

November 28th, 2007

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Posted by ChrisG at 4:44 pm

Here at Smokewriting you’ll often find me harping on about how, in the present conjuncture, we should be concerned about the increasing momentum gathering behind the Government’s integration of planning reform with forms of governance that try to redefine ‘national interest’ in narrow ’security’ terms.

The reason for this has to do with the threat such developments pose to three interlinked issues: liberty, social justice, and the possibility of building sustainability into our ways of life. A theme I keep coming back to is the way in which governance based on ’security’ produces policy incoherence. As the South Wales pipeline saga has demonstrated, one of the reasons why such incoherence is NuLabour’s constant companion is that it relies on advice from private, profit-driven organisations in order to formulate what are supposed to be long-term policy goals. In approving the pipeline project, the Government decided to accept National Grid’s forecasts that demand for natural gas was keep on rising over the next fifteen years, outstripping supply. This forecast is of course at odds with the stated goals of government policy on climate change, and in no way takes into account any effects on gas consumption caused by policy measures designed to counteract climate change. In fact, National Grid have admitted [PDF] that their forecasting methodology cannot as yet incorporate current models of climate change.

Consequently, the forecasts produced by National Grid reflect, above all, the interests of their shareholders. Instead of an indentured public servant, we have a freebooter whispering into the ear of the prince.

The decision to go ahead with a consultation on the third Heathrow runway demonstrates the same incoherence, which stems from the same source. Only this time, the profiteers in question are BAA, who have been extensively involved in providing the research drawn on by the government in presenting their consultation documents. Just as with National Grid, here we have a private company created as a result of the sell-off of publicly-owned assets. The result of this transfer of ownership has been to introduce a serious imbalance into the mechanisms by which the Government sets up its policy commitments.

The sell-off of council housing in the 1980s and since destroyed any possibility of managing an essential public good for the benefit of both present and future generations. This further Thatcherian legacy threatens attempts to protect other, even more vital public goods, including democratic politics itself.